Yale Student Gets a Lesson On the Power of Web Video

What started as an attempt to stand out as a Wall Street job candidate has turned Aleksey Vayner into an Internet sensation among big brokerage houses -- and sparked an in-house inquiry at one.

Mr. Vayner, a Yale undergraduate, submitted a cover letter and resume to UBS AG, and included a link to his motivational video, titled "Impossible Is Nothing." In it, Mr. Vayner explains his philosophies of success. Among them: "Failure cannot be considered an option" and "Ignore the losers." Mr. Vayner's voice is heard over images of him playing tennis, lifting weights, skiing, ballroom dancing and ultimately breaking a tower of bricks with his bare hand.

Thanks to the exponential power of email forwarding and coverage by blogs like IvyGateBlog.com, Gawker.com and Dealbreaker.com, the video carved a path through Wall Street in recent days and made newspaper and Internet headlines in the U.K., Greece, France and Canada. UBS says it is looking into whether someone in-house inappropriately forwarded the email outside the company.

Recruiters called it a bad move by the job hunter.

"There's a fine line between getting recognition and turning people off," said Michael King, an executive recruiter for Wall Street.

"If you're applying for a reality television show, I can see this," said Carri Degenhardt-Burke, who runs an executive recruiting and consulting firm focusing on the financial industry. "In the real world of investment banks...they're probably not going to watch it."

After initially saying in an interview that he was exploring privacy lawsuits, Mr. Vayner asked that further requests go through his Fort Lee, N.J., attorney. The lawyer said, via her assistant, that she doesn't represent Mr. Vayner. Mr. Vayner didn't respond to further requests for comment.

Irking Governance Advocates

By all appearances, Jay S. Sidhu was forced out in the past week as chairman and chief executive of Sovereign Bancorp Inc. Under his employment agreement, that could allow him to walk away with a severance package valued at tens of millions of dollars.

Several board members at the Philadelphia bank had been pressing for Mr. Sidhu's dismissal due to concerns about the company's earnings outlook, its stock performance -- it trades at a discount to peers -- and about deals he has engineered.

But there is a catch: Sovereign's official explanation for his departure didn't match what was happening behind the scenes. The company said Wednesday that Mr. Sidhu "resigned and retired...for family health related reasons."

If he jumped from the plane on his own volition as Sovereign says, compensation experts argue, Mr. Sidhu isn't entitled to the golden parachute he appears to have gotten.

Nobody expected this to keep Mr. Sidhu from securing a rich goodbye package. His contract doesn't include poor performance as a reason to deny him severance, so pay experts say he deserves the money if he was effectively fired.

And Sovereign is hardly the first company to gloss over the reasons for an executive departure.

But critics in the corporate-governance community say the company's story should match its actions.

"It isn't acceptable if he is being terminated to say that he is leaving voluntarily, nor is it acceptable for the company to pay him severance if he is leaving without good reason," says Paul Hodgson of research firm Corporate Library.

Late Friday, Sovereign disclosed in a regulatory filing that Mr. Sidhu would, in fact, collect more than $40 million in payments stemming from his departure. And the company acknowledged that "the resignation and retirement came in the face of a threatened termination by the company."

Getting Satisfaction

Claes Fornell, a University of Michigan Business School marketing professor, hasn't let a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation interfere with his research, or his investments.

Prof. Fornell studies the satisfaction consumers get from the products and services they buy -- everything from Heinz ketchup to Yahoo's Web site. He believes his customer-satisfaction rankings of companies, based on surveys of individuals, predict movements in the companies' shares.

The theory is straightforward: If people aren't satisfied with a company's products, they'll stop buying them and it will hurt earnings, and visa versa.

To prove his point, Prof. Fornell started trading the stocks his research tracks several years ago. A 2003 Wall Street Journal article on this trading sparked an investigation by the SEC, because he was making trades before his quarterly satisfaction studies were made public.

Prof. Fornell argued that while his research did indicate the direction of a stock's long-term performance, it didn't affect the short-term performance of shares, so the timing of his trades shouldn't matter.

Now, he is having a good run in the market and with regulators. His lawyer, Paul Rentenbach, said in an interview that earlier this year the SEC concluded its investigation and informed the professor it didn't plan to take any action.

Meantime, Prof. Fornell continued to trade after the investigation started, though only after his numbers were made public. A study in the Journal of Marketing published in January argued that his portfolio returned 32% in 2004, compared with 9% for the S&P 500; 36% in 2003 compared with 26% for the S&P 500 and -5% in 2002, compared with -23% for the S&P 500. In the five years through June 2006, he says, he's up 112%.

One of his best holdings is Apple Computer Inc. In addition, VF Corp., Yum Brands Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. -- all high-satisfaction brands -- have performed well as stocks. Heinz does well in his satisfaction rankings, but he doesn't hold the shares, he says, because the shares don't seem to track the index.

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